Honestly? Nothing much. (Cue "HERESY!")
The selling point of this particular novel is supposed to be Fleet Secundus's strike into the Eye of Terror, but it's really about the crew of the Mars battle cruiser, Judgement of the Void, which is commanded by High Captain Kiastros. We don't actually get to the Eye of Terror until the epilogue, and even then, it's because...well, I'll elaborate on it later, but suffice to say, it's not to launch an attack against traitor forces.
The story opens with Iannis Kiastros showing off his tactical skills by inflicting damage on an enemy cruiser and destroying another (the credit for that goes to the Adepta Sororitas ship that they came to escort, though) when escorting a bunch of ships to the musterpoint at U-93. They meet up with an immense battle group with hundreds of ships (who the feth was the guy on reddit who was whining that there were thousands of ships and that it made no sense for Indomitus Crusade Fleets or battle groups to be that large? You didn't even get the numbers right!), take on Miriam Isobel, a Sister Hospitaller, from the aforementioned Adepta Sororitas ship, and Tuo Maizad, a sergeant from the Iron Shades Chapter, along with his squad of Space Marines. I assume they are Intercessors, but I don't know for sure.
Unfortunately, things go ploin shaped the moment Battle Group Dominus is about to launch a strike to the Eye of Terror. Before that, Kiastros was ordered by Heila Jovanjiar, the groupmaster of the battle group Dominus, to protect an Inquisition ship, no matter the cost. It must survive, no matter what. The mission is made all the more challenging when an immense Chaos fleet warp in at U-93, getting the drop on Battle Group Dominus and pretty much...annihilating them. Well, I think a good number of Loyalist ships escaped, but...
In any event, our protagonists aboard the Judgement of the Void engage the Traitor ships, while desperately trying to protect the Inquisition ship that flew out of formation for some reason, exposing itself to Chaos enemy vessels. While trying to protect the damned ship, they get boarded by Dark Mechanicum Skitarii, who attempt to construct some weird device at their point of entry (don't ask me why they didn't just assemble it and bring it along on their boarding pods, I don't know). Something similar strikes the Astropath tower where Garg Vandia Ortuyo and his group of astropaths are, and the whole area is cut off. In any event, Maizad and his squad, as well as Aris Garrock and his Armsmen (Navy Breachers, if you really want tabletop gaming terms and to reconcile the fact that they are on the cover illustration of this particular novel - probably have to sell those Kill Team models or something, I guess - but to hell with that, I'm calling them Armsmen) reach the breach and fight the Dark Mechanicum Skitarii. The Space Marines squad get wiped out, much to the chagrin of Redditors, who yet again complain about how it is impossible for 5 Space Marines to get killed by Dark Mechanicum Skitarii.
Firstly, Maizad survived, albeit in a coma. He's the sole survivor, yes. And secondly, it was a lot of Skitarii. An entire army of Skitarii. If you're telling me an entire army of Skitarii can't take out a single squad of Astartes, I kind of fear for the Imperium and forge worlds all over the galaxy whenever they get invaded by Heretic Astartes.
Anyway, Maizad and Garrock stop the Skitarii and destroy the device, though at the cost of Maizad's squad and all of Garrock's armsmen. They are the only survivors, and Maizad ends up in a coma, so Garrock has to drag him to the apothecarium run by Isobel to get him treated.
The Inquisition ship gets destroyed. Oh no! Kiastros failed his mission! GAME OVER...but wait! What's that? A tiny ship detaches and flies toward the Judgement of the Void. Apparently, the survivors had gotten on a transport vessel and escaped the destruction of their mother ship. The Judgement of the Void takes them on, and they are revealed to be Interrogator Hastin il-Moro and his retinue. Inquisitor Gertruda, his mentor, had died along with the main ship. They are carrying the last shard of the Anathame, though obviously the crew does not know that.
Once the Interrogator and his bunch are onboard, the Judgement of the Void escapes into the warp. They are badly damaged, and things start going to hell. Their navigator, Mergaux Santalina, reports that they are being pursued by the warp. The whole astropathic tower has been cut off, and Kiastros orders the Master of Engines, Magda Kuhl, to bring a crew and a Tech-priest, Magos Arfo-5 and his servitors and Skitarii to the area to dig toward where Ortuyo and any surviving astropaths might be. Kuhl, though, is driven by paranoia because she had been detained by the Inquisition in her homeworld before she joined the crew and rose through the ranks as an engineerium worker, and she is afraid of the Interrogator. The warp will take advantage of that later.
Garrock receives reports that another place has been boarded, so he and his armsmen go check the place out. They find out that it was a single boarder, and from the details by crew menials and those living in the bowels of the ship, they are able to tell that it's a Space Marine. They believe it's a Chaos Space Marine, and they begin to hunt him down. Panicking, because for some reason Navy Breachers think they can't defeat a single wounded Astartes despite being able to bring him down through sheer volume of firepower with their shotguns and las-volley guns, Garrock requests Isobel to wake Maizad from his coma to help them fight the guy.
C'mon. Normal mortals have defeated Astartes before. You don't need your own Space Marine to fight a Space Marine. Sigh.
After that, long story short, the crew go insane, the ship begins getting corrupted. They drop out of the warp, and using the transport ship that brought il-Moro and his retinue to the Judgement of the Void, Kiastros is able to destroy the pursuing battle cruiser that Santalina spots. The transport gets destroyed in the process, with the pilot shouting something like it's a mistake. They can't really see the ship because their augurs and sensor arrays are destroyed, and they can't communicate either because their communications arrays are broken. How convenient. They take even more damage during the fight, before they return to the warp eventually.
Isobel gets a premonition about the astropath tower, so she joins Kuhl and Arfo-5 to breach the place, just in case any mutants or Chaos things are at play there. Meanwhile, Garrock, the armsmen and a recently awakened Maizad track down the errant space marine, a duel ensues, and both Maizad and the boarder kill each other. To his horror, Garrock discovers that the boarder Astartes is a loyalist. Some people think he's an Exorcist, based on the red of his armor, but I dunno. Anyway...uh oh. They wasted their only Astartes on killing another loyal Space Marine. How fethed up is that?
Everyone descends into further madness. Isobel, Kuhl and Arfo-5 reach the astropaths, only to discover they have all mutated into...warp spawn. Or chaos spawn. Yikes. They attack, and the Skitarii are getting killed, but Isobel reaches the now mutated Ortuyo and is about to kill him when Kuhl, driven insane by her paranoia against the Inquisition, stabs her. Feth you, b****!
Meanwhile, Kiastros, also falling to the madness, rallies his crew to attack il-Moro and the Inquisition retinue. They kill everybody, and Kiastros gets his hands on the last shard of the Anathame. Damn.
Santalina realizes they're doomed, and she convinces the second-in-command, Leroa Avati, the Master of Astrogation, to kill her while she also unveils her third eye. Because death is better than what is coming. Prior to this, Avati and Garrock meet up and find out that the battle cruiser they destroyed when they dropped out of the warp earlier was a Loyalist battle cruiser. Hence the Inquisition pilot screaming that it was a mistake earlier. So they didn't just kill a Loyal Astartes, they also wrecked an entire fellow Imperial Navy battle cruiser. Oh, s...
Garrock finds Kiastros holding the Anathame, and the captain proceeds to murder him and the few remaining armsmen who are still sane.
The novel ends with Kiastros captaining the ship deep into the Eye of Terror and handing the Anathame to the Hand of Abaddon, Tenebrus. Yheng is with Tenebrus, because...you know, continuity, and they appear in other Dawn of Fire books. Right, they are inside this...vast space station thingy whose docks are huge enough to house an entire battle cruiser. Probably bigger than a damned planet, for all I know. Anyway, Kiastros flies the now corrupted Judgement of the Void into it, disembarks and hands over the Anathame to Tenebrus, and returns to his ship.
...and that's it.
Is it a good book? By the Emperor, yes. It's intriguing and an enjoyable read. The madness is in there, the twists, while predictable, are decent (maybe it's because I read way too many Warhammer 40,000 books, but I saw the Loyalist battle cruiser coming light years away). Chris Wraight is an amazing author, the naval fight scenes are cool, the Dark Mechanicum Skitarii are awesome, and the Iron Shades are an interesting Chapter. Maizad and Isobel are also refreshing, far from the caricatural stereotypes of Space Marines and Sisters of Battle depicted in Black Library lore. I can't tell you how much they - and this particular novel, Sea of Souls - are a much needed improvement over The Martyr's Tomb and a breath of fresh air. Feth those bloody Black Templars and overly zealous Adepta Sororitas. Marc Collins is a competent writer, don't get me wrong, but that was...not exactly a novel I particularly enjoyed. Sigh.
This one, I love it. So I'll definitely recommend it, sure as sure.
That said, if you're looking for something to "further" the narrative or lore, for the storyline to progress or something, or if you're anticipating a huge naval battle in the Eye of Terror, well...you'll be disappointed. I would say, certainly, Tenebrus - and by extension, Abaddon - getting his hands on the last shard of the Anathame and looking to combine it is actually a major development in the lore, but for others, they might find it lackluster. Your mileage may vary.
Well, that's all I have for now. I'm looking forward to The End and the Death part III, and as usual, I'll do a spoiler writeup once I've finished reading the book. Till then!
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